• The Summer 2006 Huber Wedding

• New Garage & Brewing

• D.C 2006 Trip

Hrm — perhaps a few quickies as well

• Turkey Day was a 3h drive “Up Nort” to one of Moms sisters’ places — very nice spread and a great meal. Marinated wild turkey…mmm! That is a long drive for a meal though…
• Long weekend – so nice. I’m refusing to even turn the work laptop on. This is driving me a bit nutty, but I’m dealing with the withdrawl symptoms nicely.
• In Vino Veritas: Gotta get the Cab/Merlot bottled this weekend — by next Oct with 10 months in the bottle, it should be damn good.
• Lots of good news on the Cray front. This is a huge validating win for us and really should help move Cray back to the front of the pack, if not breaking away from the peloton someday entirely, for real HPC offerings. Wankers with your “clusters” need not apply. By-the-way, anything below a 30TFLOP system now immediately registers as “small” with me — I know, a bit snobbish — deal with it.
• The year of road trips starts in under 30 days. Oy. We are driving back to MT with the dogs for Christmas — I’m praying for a smooth trip both ways. If all goes well with the dogs, we’ll be repeating this trip 4 times next year — 3 weddings and then Christmas. If all does not go well, we’ll be repeating the trip with the addition of drugs for the dogs. Modern pharmacology is not without its benefits.
• Boston – I’ll be there Saturday May 26th through early morning Tuesday June 2 for the Liza’s wedding – I’d love to catch up with a certain Herr Schwan & McDonald provided they can be troubled to drink beer.
• The Violator: Just go watch. This, Ladies & Gentlemen, is my future brother-in-law. I couldn’t be happier.

So – wedding updates for the abnormally nosy or just plain voyeuristic:

• Location: Leaning towards the old Depot at Oscar’s in Billings — sight unseen yet, but it sounds neat.
• 2nd Best Man (As I’m the one doing the marrying, I should be the Best man) : Kris
• Groomsman ..mmm, gonna have to come up with a different title there, that sounds like they should be making a horse pretty. Not that I mind that comparison. Marcus,
• Master of Ceremonies: Lou Becht. Seriously — is there anyone better for the job ?
• Date : Oct 6 2007. Wow. I have a wedding date.

So — what else has been going on ? Work. Then some work, and a bit more work, I took a poop, showered, slept a bit, then a ton more work. I might have done some more work in there somewhere. Oh yeah — then there was that one day that I worked a lot. Then I mowed the lawn — cause lawn’s don’t talk

I’ve been working on a “Lustre issue” at Sandia – nights, days, and weekends for ~3 weeks now. This is right after the 2 weeks of Army fun and 3 weeks of ORNL fun. Results: ORNL upgraded to the largest open science in the U.S., narrow-cased the Army with one of the other engineers on the File System team here at Cray, and Sandia’s issue #1 fixed and issue #2 being worked way below Lustre. There are a lot of folks who I should thank for either showing me more about Lustre or helping me work out other interactions and issues with the XT3. I’ve already done so personally, so I will protect the innocent here.

BTW – I saw an IOR perform writes at 34 GB/s on Lustre. Holy @#$@#! For the supercomputer illiterate – that is like throwing 8 DVDs across the room every second. Yeah, we got some mother@#$ing performance on a mother@#$ing supercomputer.

Oh yeah, and one very exhausted and burnt out Nic. I’ve gotten some very nice emails from mid to senior level managers about my work, and the freedom to take the time I need to “work from home” and regroup. Have I mentioned how much I love working for Cray ? I have been really working hard to make sure I am making the most of this opportunity. I really am starting to feel like I can move more and more into being a real “developer” on Lustre and I think I can move into a technically senior position in a few short years.

Well — I’m going to have another beer and pass out. I think tomorrow is clean the office, sleep and make beer day. Maybe I’ll mow the backyard too. Anything could happen!

So — I was standing in the hall near the restroom — the same hall that leads to the kitchen and lunchroom btw — talking to a fairly senior software manager and one of the lowlevel software guy about lord-knows-what and all of a sudden there was this “PRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT” noise that came flying out of the men’s restroom. Through the closed solid wood door. The conversation stopped, we all kinda glanced at each other and then in unison burst out laughing. The phrase “give ‘er hell” was said and we walked away — not wanting to see who came out of the bathroom. There are some things that you just don’t want to know.

Because I think this way — that kinda made me think back and wonder about some of the other “bathroom events”. There seems to be either an issue with the water/coffee/deli machine OR swamp-ass is much more prevalent than we think. I’m pretty sure at least 4 times a week I’ll be in the bathroom (I really use it much more often…) and hear someone really letting one fly. If you are lucky — just a little “prrt” – but at least once a day you hear someone having a “movement” that could be described in the mildest terms as a week-long-tequilla-binge-meets-30-day-challenge-to-eat-4-bratwurst-a-day-while-drinking-giardia-laden-new-jersey-turnpike-shots. I’m really understanding now the flushing power of public toilets — sometimes you need a firehose to sink these battle-shits. What is really wondefull is how unashamed people seem to be with these conditions. Most times if you have this problem in a public restroom — you try and spread out the “frrrgggugglllefwopfwop” so that it doesn’t sound like a underwater rocket taking off. But not these folks — hand to god, I’ve heard actual straining and grunting. Give ‘er hell indeed! Oddly enough — rarely do smells enter the picture. Perhaps the fans really do work – btw, rarely is not never. Good heavens…

Now a question for the lazyweb — is this common for all workplaces? How about women ? These are things I need to know.

Anyhooo…. Most of the weekend has been spent watching World Cup games. I’m not planning on watching all of them – Tivo only has instructions to record the England, U.S, and Spain games. I may have to alter that if any of them go tits-up before the elimination round. I have had two consecutive mornings of coffee, sofa, blanket and el World Cupo. Currently Mexico is trying to convince Iran to bring their “war faces” next time. I’m hoping to see one of my 3 teams make it far enough to get me interested in the final games. I do find myself really wishing I had HD TV at this point – but only with a HD Tivo. Soon, but must pay off other bills and purchase a house.

Speaking of said house…it is looking like time to re-evaluate the finances and determine exactly how much of my income I really want to spend on a house payment. From the initial look at the current rates of exspenditure, I won’t be able to afford a house that I really like. Boogers. I’d really really like to get a nicer house because I don’t fancy myself moving in the next 10 years again unless something really strange happens. Yes, I like my new job that much

Speaking of said job (and here starteth the rantingseth) – I’m starting to get a bit miffed at the old job, where I started to think that I wasn’t bright enough or skilled enough to do actual Lustre hacking — network, kernel, disk layer, super-complex distributed networking programming. Yes, I’m not going to design the next great filesystem, but I really am starting to think that I can make a pretty good swipe at debugging and understanding the code base. Time will tell It just pisses me off that someone or worse yet — myself — convinced me that there were limits to my skills in this area without actually exploring them.

Ok – the old elbow is starting to kill me here from some retarded furniture re-arranging last night. Just a final note to those Right Coasters – I’ll be in Philly Jun 30th, July 3rd-4th and in D.C July 1st-3rd. Be there or get sprung.

Cheers!

The very gracious folks at Cray have extended me an offer to work in the Filesystem group as a Software Engineer III. Sweet! I will be working from the Medota Heights, MN location — so all you Mpls/St. Paul folks get ready, I’m a moving on in! Cray is a fantastic company, I’ve worked with them and their hardware for the last year or so. I am hoping my experience translates nicely into a easy transistion there. I will be working to help support Lustre and other filesystems on the Cray hardware line, so watch out CFS — I’m Baaaaack.

Thankfull this ends a very anxious (and broke!) job search for the last 6 weeks. I’m ecstatic that it is over, but I do have to say that not doing much for 6 weeks was a right nice vacaction. I’m going to be starting the new J.O.B. on the 13th of March and I am so looking forward to working and earning my moohlah again. I now have a very hectic week and a half to get my current residence packed up and cleaned, then hang around Billings for a week to wrap up some paperwork stuff, then on the road and moving here around the 9th or 10th. Wee! Thankfully Aunt Red has offered for us to hang out at here place until we get settled and find a new place. I will most certainly be taking her up on that offer!

Well — I better get back to enjoying the minus 10F goddamned weather here in MN. Yeah, stay inside has a nice sane ring to it.

Anyhoo.. woke up, shower & shave, coffee, then moved towards clothes – dress shirt & trousers with a wool dress coat. I was given a ride to the airport (coffee in tow), hit security right off as I had checked in online, then off to the gate to get some good coffee-drinking-iPod-jamming-reading-book lovins before boarding. Arrived, hit Budget for my car (this is where the day started to get really good) – I was due a compact car, but somehow scored a Ford SUV thingy with leather interior. Something about wearing a dress coat and driving a leather interior that makes a man feel good.

Ahh yes — so the real reason for the trip was an interview. It went quite well, blah blah blah. Pretty standard fare for a tech interview, lunch, etc. Back in the SUV (btw – I HATE these fugging things. They are SO the new mini-van;popular with soccer moms and neutered men. They just have bigger tires and bumpers…) Got a nice surprise while there when the sales dude from my old company walks in. Sometimes the planets align just so – it was good to see him and catch up a bit. Hit the aeropuerto for the flight back, enjoying the ability to just drop the car off and run – I love direct billing. More Ipod & book, interrupted by some people watching. Women in SLC are tall. Huh. Came home, was picked up at the ‘port by the lovely gf. What is it about sexy women driving your truck to pick you up that just well… you know. Back to the shack and chilled on the sofa with dog, girl and beer. Mmm good!

Fire, kerosene laterns, Indian food (homemade of course!) for dinner, more hound-scratching and some tivo lovins. Backrub for the gf, quick email check, now off to my leather chair and the fireplace to read some more.

Some days just rock.

Update Sampling my latest beer concoction – porter with coffee & chocolate. OMFG. Yeah, that good. It is still really young yet, but I envision me trying to dance with the dog if I drink too many more of these.

In the meantime,I’ve uploaded a few more photots for your visual enjoyment:

• little man (Portana’s wearing his Seahawk jersey during the first playoff game. He’s a hillarious little kid — it was really interesting to see how he and the Bogart interacted. Talk about mutual fear for a while, but after the initial scare, some chasy-chasy and petting was had.

• Dr. Jacks’ No. 7 Go-Kart. What more fun can you experience than metal fabrication while drinking?

So! What does this all mean? New job time – of course, and a very likely relocation. Salaries in Billings are no where near what I was making and it would be a huge hit to my career as a whole. I would love to find another job that would allow me to work from home (no matter where I call home, like the Pub with free wirless during WorldCup games… just warning you…), but they are very rare. I do have two very promising opportunities and a few others that I am looking towards for future imployment. One of which is a “lifeboat” from CFS that I am really really really hoping works out. I would be working in the same field on the same software with some of the same customers — a trifecta for me if you ask. Here is the teaser for those regular readers: I’m crossing my fingers for a move to the Twin Cities area or Seattle. The former being slightly more desireable for traffic reasons (riding the Sledeghammer or HD in Seattle does not sound fun). I’ve also got a bit of family there that would make the transition so much easier. I will keep you folks posted if any paperwork gets involved. Right now I have nothing in writing that makes me think I won’t be working at UPS come March.

The next job is going to have to be better than the last — getting laid off is not going to change my opinions on what I value in a job. I am almost looking to have an office to go into — working from home is great, but I truly do think that it is less than optimal in anything but a very small company where the level of communication is low. I also want benefits. Call me crazy (crazy!), but medical, dental, etc are not an option anymore. I also want a bit more mature company that the last one, perhaps with better management. I really enjoy the self-driven work environment, but I feel that coupled with working from home it devolves into a situation where I was getting burnt out too easily and disenchanted with the work. Personal problems? Oh sure – but I do think that either closer management — or at least involving the employees into some sort of structured environement — would help alleviate these issues. If nothing else, they would be noticed and dealt with a bit earlier. I have some strong opinions on the former company that I will not voice here, it would be massively inappropriate and probably harmful to all of those involved. If people from that company wish to hear what I have to say, email me offline and I can flesh out my thoughts there.

So …you ask…what have I been up to? A lot of nothing on some days — boy is that a luxury! I’ve also been quite glad at my recent re-budgeting, I think that will allow me to track and spend in a much more sane manner now that I’ve got a limited income. I took a whole day yesterday to go help work on the ‘shop’ go-kart – I did a ton of welding and got the new front-end all ready to rock. That was SO much fun, save for laying on my back and welding overhead — slag burns fugging hurt. I’ve got a good swat at the laundry and the regular house cleaning too — for once I’ve not got a huge backlog of those types of things to do. I’m also starting to cleanup and start packing — might as well get ready for the inevitable. If nothing else, I’m looking at moving to a less expensive place come June. Oh yeah, and going to the gym. It burns us!

Well – that does it for now, more TV to watch.

Friday night was very relaxing and needed. The Portana picked me up after we both finished up work earliesh — like 4.30 pm or so. We headed down the Copper Colander to drool over the real kitchen gadets and appliances. The store is pretty solid, but it was missing my favorite brands for knives and cookware. I’m a big fan (for no reason really) of the Henkel 4 Star and for really good reasons the Calphalon One cookware. I’ve got a few of both and have been extremely happy with them. After CC, a nice dinner at the 11 cafe, then headed out to the new Furniture Row to gawk at stuff. Nothing much of interest, save for a $174 bean bag (it was not $174 nice, more like $75), and a really nice $300 leather coffee table that might have to come home with me some day. I think I found my next mattress set too, but that is a year or 3 off. A stop to the Petsmart and Costco for Dog, Cat, and Bird food, toys, bedding, etc. Sigh, little buggers are expensive. Cute, yes but expensive.

Saturday night… gift exchange with my usual group of friends. There was a ton of Elk related foods (Kris got one too!) and the usual liberal quantities of booze. I made some Tandoori drumsticks for the crowd, seemed to go over pretty well. A good time had by all, and some quite interesting gifts. One was a dildo-catcus, died green and needles for spines. I am still shaking my head over that one. We all drank enough, some cough cough more than others. Thankfully I had a lovely person to give me a ride home. At least I think that is how I got home.

Sunday morning sucked. I was quite well hung, and not in the Enzite way. Recovery was a bit slow in coming, but a nice long day of sofa denting was a proper reward for doing battle against the evils of alcohol over-production. Watched a ton of football — some good, some bad. It was a nice relaxing day and I’m glad to get back to work for once

BTW — did I put out some sort of sign? Today is the second time in as many weeks that I’ve gotten an email asking me if I’m interested in a new job. I’m not looking, really, but the offers are flattering and it does give me some options should I choose to move along there. Intersting days…

But I digress… TGIF! So — it has snowed every day this week. Snow makes me a happy man. I’ve got a fireplace, a dog, a canoodling gf and ample quanities of food & booze. It is gonna be a good night I’m looking forward to a nice slow-brained evening, possibly getting hammered flat. I could do it, I swear. This weekend is looking up – I’m on the hunt in the house here for my Christmas Tree decorations…I’m really hoping I got those in the move. If I find those, gotta get a tree — something about that smell. You people with your fake trees and fake holidays — BAH!

The “group of us” is heading up to RockDodge town for a night of drinking in a small town. Why? Someone needed to burn a gift certificate to a hotel up there…and the rest of us are going too. Not staying in the same room though, I don’t like anyone that much There has been promise of snowshoeing on Sat, and I’m sure I will freeze, fall over, get snow in very unfortunate places and have a generally fantastic time.

Well — here is to you and your weekend, now get the fug out of my way, I’ve got time to waste!

• Lou! Awesome visit. It was fantastic to reconnect with college memories and stories again. It turns out we had a ton of fun in college…I thought so! Playing golf was fun and I don’t mind losing by 40 strokes when I play the best game of my life. Yes I can count those on my toes, but I only lost 5 balls this time! New record — it sure beats having to buy and entire box to go out. BTW – did you yack up the pizza too? I soiled some poor peoples’ gutter while out walking the dog. It turns out that barfing up pizza looks the same now as it did in college — remember that one? Thankfully this time the cheese did not hang on the chainlink fence… Note to the masses: never, ever, ever beer bong a Yuengling after you just bong’d (new verb?) half of a box of wine. Note to self: you really are an idiot.

• Portana! Great ride to the Bozo, despite the coldest temps of the summer. It is amazing what leather will do as a functional piece, not to mention that whole wearing-leather-feeling-sexy-thing. It was the first trip I’ve actually felt like a Harley “road-dog” — you know the folks all leatherd up with copious amounts of baggage tied down with bungee cords. I’m soo looking forward to many more of those trips, especially to Sturgis, Jellystone, or some romantic get away. Your friends were a kick, but I think we agree on how life and its paths are funny like that. Too bad the Jellystone trip had to be junked, but 9h to Denver is looking to be a LONG day. As always, you steal my heart without meaning to!

• Liza! Nice job in Turkey — you have no idea how proud some of us are of you. It seems like only yesterday we were drinking at the ‘Dog every Thurs or traveling to Ohio to watch you kick heads. Congrats! I’m going to post a few photos, just cause you are that cool!

  • 

• Pooperbook: finally into the shop. Yay! It turns out the harddrive was standing on the edge and needed to be replaced. Booo! Hopefully (and I say this with finger, toes and testicles crossed) it is the fix that was needed, cause that whole crashy-crash thing is getting to be boolsheet.

• On vacation. In the last 2 weeks, I’ve taken a total of 5 days of vacation, and not a moment too soon. I was becoming extremely burnt out on work and the hectic pace of life that is here in MT was not helping me to recoup. I’ve managed to do absolutely dick last week as far as cleaning or anything of merit is concerned, but boy did I have fun being a sofa cushion. Today I’m on a super cleaning streak (well once I stop writing to you bastages): the office, file papers, bird cage (they are getting given away, I forget to feed them), floors and laundry. I also need to get bottles for beer and a few other errands. I’m actually looking forward to having a clean office, even if it means finally unpacking several boxes. Tomorrow will see the lawn mowed, edged, and weed & fed. It is bad when you have more cottonwood trees next to the house than grass — enjoy the rain today my friends, for tomorrow you will DIE.

• Harley, etc. Ok, so $119 USD for an oil change is freaking ridiculous. Granted I only have to do that every 5K miles, but at the current rate that is one or more per year. I should mention that there are 3 oils that need to be swapped — engine, tranny and primary, so not all that bad considering they are all synthetic too. I still need to get the rest of the 5K mile service done too. I saw a Screaming Eagle Fatboy at the Belgrade shop on the Bozo trip — it had the new 200mm rear tire and a bunch of other goodies. Yes, I am trading in my bike when the 200mm becomes standard equipment on the regular Fatboys. This will probably happen the same year that my 3 (or is it 4…time to dig through the paperwork) extended warranty expires, so good time to move up. It will probably cost me 3-4K out of pocket to do the trade, given the need to get the Stage 1 and pipes for the new bike and get a few paint booboos repaired on the old bike, but well worth it I think. Yes folks, I have a girl that loves to take the Harley on long road trips and then go out for a romantic night. I win!!!!! Sorry ladies, I’m taken now (you had your chance) and this one can sooo kick your butt. Probably mine too. On the road trip note — I think a windshield is in the near future. I can do the 2h or so to Bozo at 85mph no problem, but if there is any bit of wind it really takes the stuff right out of you. For those of you thinking I’m a pussy — bite me. I was of the same opinion (windshields are a tombstone for your sex life) until we hit wind coming back from Bozo. Reality has a way of smacking you right in the head & neck. Look at all the road warriors out there (not those fake assed ‘trailer-it-to-Sturgis’ dentist types). You will find windshields and some funky getups. Message being: be yourself and get a windscreen, they help. On a related note — the Chatterbox folks have given me some hints on getting the unit to function better with no wind noise. We shall see.

• Family. Mom — can’t wait to make pickles tonight. Nothing like homemade pickles! Melanie — good luck in the UK! Remember to use the pub cash! Jeff – take care of her and make sure she is done freaking by the time you leave. Also – get ready for hunting season, it should be a good time. Gack, I have to get tires for the truck before that and to replace the existing ones it is a re-cock-ulous $152 USD a piece. That is 30% of the purchase price of the damn thing — but if I am going to bitch about that I should mention the gas prices. Ouch, in the butt and stuff with sandpaper condom. It hurts. Allison – congrats on the new job, amazing what you get yourself into. Good luck with your new place in Bozo and school this year, I will be up to visit! We should go skiing too…and get a fake (oh quiet Mom…) so we can get out and tear it up a bit too!

• Work. It is official — I’m a travelling whore. The whore part was existing, they just put me on planes now. I’m riding the bike down to Denver, well really Boulder is what I’m hearing on the grapevine, Monday. 552 Miles, 8h15m at posted speeds. With stops, I bet it takes me 10h to get there, but boy am I going to enjoy that. Who knows what I will be working on starting Sept 1st, but it really doesn’t matter. I think I was fretting about the ORNL thing, but really it isn’t that bad and I could use the 2 extra months to kinda dig my mgmt reputation out of the gutter. It is mostly my fault, that whole consistent communication thing, but hey! I am learning. From talking to my boss , a very refreshing take on things was made and I feel better already. Thanks dude! I’m kinda hoping that I get to fly to ORNL at least once more — I need the miles for a free ticket to England to visit the sister.

• Money. I think bills are actually gaseous objects. It seems no matter how much you make, the bills seem to fill up all existing paycheck space. Thankfully I am getting near paying off one bill and with a little help from work in the salary department, I should be able to start squishing credit cards. Wee! The goal is to get everything but the Harley and student loans paid off in the next few months. Then to start saving for a house purchase. I need the tax break and the equity if not the fun of owning one’s own place. I really want to buy this house, but I’m not going to pay more per month than I am for renting it…so I might be looking at downsizing. I didn’t really want to do that, moving sucks and all, but the more I think about having less monthly expenditures, the more happy I am. Of course the new place will have to have a great fireplace, hardwood floors, central air, dishwasher, garage, etc. I’d really like to have a gas stove again too — cooking on it is so much better.

• Blog links: Ok, time to add a few more of my regular haunts. Portana was added a while back, now we are adding nitefire, hempler, the hillarious P (xmasbaby), jeff, and davem. Greetings from your referrer logs!

Well folks, I’d best get at the cleaning here, or I will sit on my arse all day and get nothing done. Laters!

• Black Eyed Peas – sexy – sultry -georgeous lead singer. Mmmm, tasty — her, Gwen Steffani and a ..well let’s call it a good time had by all. Oh yeah, their music is pretty darn good too, been jamming all morning. How is it that I am actually listening to main stream pop culture music? Am I losing my discretion ?
• Great American Hillclimb. Good times, I will have to explain the fun after this weekend, as I’m just not going to do the stories of yesteryear any justice. So far it has been a bit of cat herding to get all the friends on the same page, but I think we’ve got the plans lined out. Rough plan is to get there at 6.30am to setup the double truck & canopy venue, bust out the steak & eggs on the grill, start drinking (DUH!) and get things situated before they start launching. Loooots of drinking. Lots.
• England – only two weeks until the sister and the niece fly out — I’m so happy for you!
• Back, back, back at the ORNL. I’ll be in TN again Aug 1-6, good times. Things.move.fast. This is supposedly the second-to-last trip I will make there under the current contract, but I can’t see how the contract would end now — to many things to be done. The good news is that after 4 more trips, I will qualify for Elite status on NWA — free first class upgrades and 150% miles. Oh yeah.
• Coding is fun – I’ve gotten to do some again this week at work, turns out I’m still good at it. Thankfully I’m not a completely useless “suit” yet.
• New motorcycle helmet. Modular, super comfortable and full face protection. I can’t wait to ride on the highway with this thing, I won’t have a super sore neck or bugs implanted in my face after riding at 100mph! I know, what a wuss, but have you ever hit a dragonfly at 100? How about a cicada? Didn’t think so! Them buggers hurt.

Well I’m getting bored now, so I’m going back to work so I can get to the gym and head out for a lovely dinner date, nothing like starting off the weekend the RightWay(tm).

Update: Ok, now for why I wanted that shirt yesterday. This last weekend was a complete lazy-fest.

Saturday I woke up lateish, did the lawn mowing and a bit of yard cleanup. I then had to think about what to do for the rest of the day — thankfully Kris helped me out and I then spent the rest of the day on or near the Harley. I picked up sister Melanie for a house-sitting run to the west end, then off to McKenzie River Pizza for a few brews and lunch. Yummy says I. We stopped by Mom’s shop to chit-chat a bit, then dropped Mel off and headed to Kris’. A few more brews outside wandering around the place attempting to avoid She-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, but Kris wanted to ride the bike so I headed for the sofa and the 64″ DLP. I zonked out for an hour or so while he had his fun, we both win! That night was an adoption celebration shindig at the Morse’s, followed by a good drinking binge on the patio at Tiny’s Tavern. Jager, DuckFarts, and a liberal application of beer did a Nic good. DD: Thanks!

Sunday – of course, I was well hung. I spent most of the morning and early afternoon snoozing on the sofa and chugging fluids. NAPCAR provided the 20min bursts of between nap entertainment. Nothing like taking 6+ hours to watch a 3 hour race. Sunday night — made some bread again, been ages since doing that. It was a bit on the oogly side and a bit dense side, but boy! was it tasty. Makes good toast too. Early to bed, quite late to rise Monday morning.

Now — with all that said, Monday morning I felt like a champ. I was able to really get cracking on a few work things and it looks like the trend is increasing for the rest of the week. I think I’m pretty well over this mini-burnout. I should be doing REALLY well after a few nice long Harley trips I have planned for mid August and the long weekends of vacation I have scheduled for then. Sooo looking forward to the 6 hours or so ride from here to West Yellowstone through Yellowstone National Park.

• Bogart is getting big
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• Rest of the muddy truck pics
• Chicago from the plane during the Knoxville to Minneapolis leg.
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[brian] there is
[brian] new relationship sex: everyday, then comes
[brian] newly marred sex: 3x a week
[brian] married 5 years sex: 2x a month and then
[brian] hallway sex: where passing each other in hallway you each say to each other “fuck you”.
[brian] that usually comes right before divorce.
[brian] well, divorce or murder, depending on your perspective on solving problems.

Smell that? Yes friends, that is the smell of a Friday afternoon going right out the window with my ambition and motivation. I now need to decide whether I start drinking or napping now.

So, yeah, the real point is that I realized how chatting via email or IRC/AIM/Yahoo/MSN is so limited. I think they work ‘OK’ for technical work, but the more I get involved with project management where the needs are more on a personal and not a technical level, that the comms used really lack the ability to fully communicate The Messsage. I’d like to think that I am pretty good about communicating on a personal level with people when I am face to face, but when it comes to email or chat, that level of connection, mutual understanding, or whatever you’d like to call it, seems to really go missing and I feel like either I’ve not gotten the point across or that the other person(s) have not acknowledged that I have. Who knows, this might just be my brain craving more personal interaction and showing it by disliking the non-personal interactions.

I have found that voice conversations are pretty good for most things, especially as far as communicating raw data or discussing something is concerned, but the rhythm can be difficult to find and the conversations can get quite skewed towards one person talking more than the other, as there is no out of band (body language) way to change that.

On a slightly related note, I believe someone made the comment “Honestly, what year is it again?” in reference to some sort of technical project that did not go as expected. This whole chat thing has me thinking too — why hasn’t the technology for this really exploded ? Or has it, and has been seen in the last 5 years, the USA is just lagging behind the tech acceptance curve ? For instance, you hear all about these crazy Japanese or Finish people who use these nifty G3 cell phone features every day. Perhaps if the US had a better (read cheaper, faster and generally less sucky) broadband solution, perhaps we would have a higher incident rate of video conferencing or similar conversation applications ? Speaking of which — has anyone ever used an iSight ? I’m really quite expecting that for most anything I want to do it will be either Windows or Apple based, as Linux solutions tend to interoperate pretty poorly. I’m so willing to be proven wrong though. I’m also curious as to how well using a webcam type thingy will do for Yahoo or MSN type chatting. Hrm, food for thought, that is.

• Why does it always have to be the best weather of the week on Friday ?
• Working 4 days a week would be so nice. I could start drinking in earnest Thursday.
• Does the word ‘Fri’ indicate something? It sounds a lot like ‘fried’, as in ‘dude, I am totally fried’.
  • For those German speaking folks, also quite similar to German ‘Fri’, meaning ‘free’(as in beer, not speech).
• 2 hour lunches are contagious. You take one (or three) of them in one week, and then having just an hour for lunch on Friday seems like a crime against humanity. Besides, doesn’t everyone need to watch MythBusters to clear the lunch nap fuzzies ?
• Shit. I have to go to the gym tonight. Yes, it is going to hurt, but it does a body good. F@#k you, milk people and your marketing drones.
• To drink or not to drink? If I decide to go all out on playing ‘Hide the Bourbon’ with the liver, I will be hung as all heck tomorrow morning and won’t get anything done before noon. If I don’t drink, what the heck am I going to do, clean the house!?
  • To those of you thinking ‘Why don’t you just drink in moderation, say just have a few?’, I would like to respond to with this link
• Always nice when the co-workers break out the Pimpbot 5000 links.
• Girls are fun.
  • Guys – if you have a good girl, keep her, at least until she goes insane. Then run like hell. Hold on, hold on — I am saying nothing bad about women in general, just if they do go insane, you don’t want to be in range of the event horizon. Most likely there is something retarded that you could say, and given our lack of ability to say the proper thing at the right time, we will say anything that comes to mind, and viola you are running for your life.
    • Editors Note This is not reflecting any recent personal data (quite the opposite really!) I’m just attempting to be funny.
  • Girls – don’t judge us by the masses. Most guys are lacking critical brain function and don’t appreciate you. However, the rest of us (yes I include myself. bite me!) are relative gems and deserve an ever so slight break once in a while. We are, after all, the weaker sex
    • Yes, Tom Cruise is cute, but see what kind of bat-shit-crazy he has gone over Katie Holmes ? God, I must be a sap, but I wonder what Nicole Kidman thinks of all this?
• The votes are in. Christians 10, Lions 1;

I think I’ve gone off the nutty end of things for long enough! Happy Friday!

And for those of you e-voyeurs curious what this weekend, in all it’s probably unbloggable glory looks like:

• Telling the alarm clock to go have sex with itself. Unless you are getting up to run.
• Mowing the lawn. Not necessarily all that fun, but if your yard consisted of a 15′ square brick patio, you’d be excited too. Besides, I get to play the ever so fun game of ‘how-many-dog-turds-can-the-lawnmower-pick-up-with-the-bagger-so-I-don’t-have-to-by-hand’.
• A surprise BBQ for someone…happy b-day!
• Mud bogs perhaps ? Quite tempting, “I’m just not sure if I will have time”.
• Harley. Oh, how I will miss you! So let’s celebrate by abusing you and the laws of physics.

Work…so yeah, work. I am off to the great cultural haven of TN on Sunday again. I’m much less excited about being gone for a week this time, I’m having way too much fun here in MT. To be honest, it really feels like summer just got started and that I’m starting to move on where I want life to go in the next year or two. Now we are going to hijack it for a week (for work!!). It really isn’t that bad, but the summer keeps seeming shorter and shorter. The project I am working on is still pretty cool, and I am enjoying the limited number of things on my horizon for it. It turns out you can work and have a life at the same time, and life can be fun! Anyways..back to work (yes, I’m just a bit distracted today…) So, my role in this project has turned a bit of a corner, and I am going to blather on and geek out for a bit on it, mainly to get my thoughts in order..

So, it started off as a pretty typical ‘support’ engineering consultant. Mr Consultant, please get systems X, Y, and Q up and running, test them, and see where we stand for stability and performance. Ha I say! No problem, whack-a-doodle & presto! This went all fine, thankfully. The XT3 is a big sexy pile of hardware, but no where near the X1E. It behaved pretty well, and I’m looking forward to seeing that 15GB/s I/O throughput number in the next month or two. Shhh, but that just might be a world record…sssssh! So, now that we have demonstrated decent application benefits on a small scale (one app saw 10X improvement), we are moving forward with a broader scope of small scale testing to show the benefits of putting Lustre into production on Jaguar. Jaguar reboots so often, in the 1-2 times a day range, and takes so long to reboot, that adding a pile of service nodes to the equation tends to slow down the whole reboot process. To wrap it all up — basically we need to show the gain that offsets the pain of adding these service nodes and Lustre startup to the reboot cycle.

Now, onto the fun bits. I suppose I should have registed this earlier, but the nature of my consulting to ORNL needs to change to be more of a ‘Project Manager’ rather than a support engineer. What is the difference you ask ? Well, first off, I need to be much more visible and start producing the usual status, progress and update documentation. This really is a critical piece, as I can do all sorts of organization and get people to do the ‘real work’, but if there is no representation and dissemination of that info, well, nobody but me will know that. Not good. I am OK at managing people, and dealing with the logistics and technical details of a large plan like this, but staying focused and on track with it all is not my strong suit. Some of you may remember last summer…ugh. Hrm, well really this is much better, as I know what I am driving towards, and the projects have a fairly defined scope and plan already. There will be a bit of a struggle to change the dynamics and perception of those at ORNL that I am the ‘go-to guy’ for the Lustre storage there, especially since I am working remotely 3/4 of the time. The changes are pretty significant to make, but can be described pretty simply as ‘taking ownership’. It’s mine, and I will cry if I want to!

So, all in all, not that tough to really do, just needed some thinking through for what it all means. Ahh, right on cue, there is a problem to diagnose on the test system…excellent

• Work.
  • Wow, what a month. I am continuing to enjoy working for ORNL. As I am attempting to work right now, I’m going to try and not blather on for eternity. If I talk about it, I’ll be forced to not do anything today…again.
• Working out
  • It turns out that Svelte Nic is being a bit more reluctant than I anticipated. Getting old sucks. I’ve since switched gyms to Evolution. I’ve switched mainly because I sometimes need folks to drag me to the gym and the availability of work-out buddies changes during the summer.
  • Evolution kicks ass. Period. Also, drinking protien shakes is lots less painful than it used to be. They even taste good, not like the shredded cardboard of yesteryear.
• Softball
  • Since the move back to Montana, I’ve gotten to do 10K things I’ve been missing for the last 6 years. We are playing city league co-ed ‘D’ league. So far we are doing pretty well. I’m having a ton of fun!
• Girls
  • Ahh, the dilema. How much do I tell, given that some of them might just stumble across this site? I think it more fun to keep y’all guessing…
  • The Lions made an early run and attempted to suck the life out of me with a nubile young decoy, but I managed to fend of the attack through the use of my you-must-be-able-to-at-least-appear-interesting-for-the-first-date defense. The Christians seem to be coming back, with an exquisitely crafted import with a seemingly Siren ability to lure me into beaching my raft. It is quite surprising to see this new level of tatics being used in Billings, it was refreshing to meet similarily equipped warrior as myself. I might just have to revise my reporting to a more positive light, war leaves something to be desired for reporting, but hey, I’m having fun with it, so just go along for now.
  • Alive after 5 proved to be a target rich enviroment. It was fun to see people I’ve not heard from in years, as well as those people I got introduced to.

I think that covers most of the interesting bits, well ok, I’m sure I am forgetting lots of stuff, but I’m lazy and need to work.

• Boiled peanuts. I have to say these look really odd. Basically they are regular peanuts that have been boiled in a big pot for a long time. You get a big 32oz cup of them for 3 bucks and a paper bag for the shells. They are really pretty good — taste more like beans than peanuts once they are softened up.
• Deep fried dill pickles. Yum. Just plain Yum. Horseradish sauce and mustard. Damn these were good.
• Fried beer battered green tomatoes. Surprisingly good. The ones we had were quite meaty, so lots of tasty goodness. There is much less tomatoe flavor than I’d expected and really kinda tasted like onion rings with something different in the middle — if that makes any sense.
• BBQ. Ok, not my first time with this, but it was so good it bears mention. If you get here, “Smokin Joes” is a must stop.

Yeah, I had a salad for dinner. I think I am going to need another suitcase to pack the extra ass in.

Update: Here are a few pictures I got in Cades Cove

• Innocent signs for things like ‘High Flux Isotope Reactor’ and ‘Spalation Neutron Source’. I get that creepy feeling like when I think about standing buck-nekkid with my ‘special parts’ in front of the microwave. Are my kids now going to have 14 fingers and 3 heads ? Just think of the troubles clothing those little mutants. I guess I better find a wife with some serious knitting skills, otherwise I’m gonna have to do it (I can, thank you Mom for that bit of manly instruction when I was a kid).
• Girls. They are about as scarce on the lab as a virgin in a biker bar. I can honestly say that I don’t think I have seen a single girl at the lab that I would risk asking out. Besides they are all smarter than me.
  • This is SO not the case in Knoxville. My neck was sore after Sundown in the City.
• Y-12. This is the first Uranium separation plant. Ever. I drive past it twice a day to the lab. I keep thinking there is a Homer Simpson somewhere in there.
• People fish in “Mecury Creek“. As they say here: that ‘splains’ a few things.
• Cell phones. They almost work here, some buildings are great, others absolutely no signal. I have a hunch that someone is listening too, which gets dangerous when your friends are criminals like mine. “I was never convicted of that…”
• There will be no pictures of this, but for a week there was a helicoptor flying around with some sort of torpedo looking thing hanging from a cable. Oddness.

I think that is all for now, more later as I explore the place.

So far the stay has been pretty good, and as usual I will leave it to my skill with bullet lists to explain.

• hotel is not bad. I have a king bed and A/C. TV channel selection sucks.
• There is nothing to do in Oak Ridge besides eat at chain restuarants, and bad ones at that.
• Knoxville is close enough (and I rated a rental car for this trip).
  • I recommend getting down to the Old City and to the strip.
  • If only one – do the Old City, but if during “college season”, do the strip. UT girls.
• I was lucky enough to make some friends right off the bat, so I’ve had great tour guides for bars and restuarants here.
  • Putting together cute girls and this southern accent is very nice. Very nice.
• Work has not been too bad, the first week went quite smoothly, second week has been waiting around for massive hardware problems. Waiting sucks.

I’m not feeling that creative at the moment, so I will expand on this more later….

• Travis and Charla’s wedding. Wow.
  • Usually a single bloke like me has fun flirting at weddings like these, as there are lots of cute single girls. Not so much with this one — most of the girls there were either “with man” or were bitchy girls I went to High School with. Bummer!
• A nasty cold. Two weeks, one near death and not working. Sucky.
• Trip to Seattle for work, working at Cray.
  • I had forgotten what it was like to work normal office hours. Talk about a treat!

Here are a few pictures that I’ve managed to snap too.

• Bekkah and Bogart. I had Rebekkah here for a morning while Melanie was taking tests for school. That kid is just amazing! Melanie, you are a lucky mom!
  • 
• Mountains somewhere close to Seattle.
  •